And now for something completely different. Have you ever heard of an Oulipo? I was introduced to the form during one of my writing classes and found it quite intriguing. Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle or OULIPO was founded by French Mathematician Francois de Lionnais and writer Raymond Queneau in 1960. Basically it is introducing a constraint while writing a poem, creating a short story, or a lipogram.
My first experiment with creating an OULIPO using Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken took an interesting turn. I tried the N + 7 route which is using the dictionary, replace the major nouns with another noun which is the 7th one below it. However the first line ending up being Two robbers diverged in a women. Hmmm! Once I quit laughing, I got the bright idea to take book titles and transform them into a story, but got as far as a weird poem.
This week we have several literary author birthdays making it really hard to choose just one. So my Oulipo is a mashup of titles from their books, which once again makes either a a strange story or weird poem. I'll leave that up to you to decide. Also, without googling, see if you can identify the authors from the titles. Then add one or more of them to your want list to read this year.
A descent into the Maelstrom
Behind the Lines
Cry of the Owl
Deep Water
Facts of the case of M. Valdemar
Gold Bug
Hop Frog
Imp of the Perverse
Lady with the Little Dog
Mr. Pim
Nothing that Meets the Eye
Portraits and Speculation
Red House Mystery
Six Weeks in Russia
Talented Mr. Ripley
The Way We Live Now
Three Sisters
We Didn’t Mean to See
When We Were Very Young
Two People
A Letter to America
A Table Near the Band
Lovers in London
Purloined Letter
Agnes Grey
Benefactor
Cask of Amontillado
Secret Water
Once Upon a Time
Peter Duck
Carol
Four Day’s Wonder
Things in our Garden
Black Cat
Seagulls
Masque of Red Death
House at Pooh Corner
Pit and the Pendulum
Where the Stress Falls
Premature Burial
Why don't you give it a try with books from your own shelves and see what happens!
Happy reading!
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Please link to your specific post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading. Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week. No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.
That is WILD, Robin! *lol*
ReplyDeleteThis week I read the short story collection Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, by Connie Willis. I liked it, but haven't reviewed it yet, so I don't have a link for week 3.
ReplyDelete